Throughout my formative days in school I eventually decided that almost everyone is pretty willy nilly in the wood shop. Maybe my generation has phobia of power tools to some extent or a larger ratio of us are mega sensitive to saw dust. It could have been a geographical concern, but I didn't think that the case either being that I was in rural Illinois. The tightest thing I had even seen made out of wood was maybe a big tree, or a really fancy birdhouse, or the structure of a swanky home being built. There wasn't anything interesting and wooden in my life.

Then back in 2006, I go to this Mike Rea guys opening at the Butcher Shop/ Dogmatic Gallery in Chicago. The space (a very large one) was jam packed with these, super elaborate, grandiose, all wooden sculptures. I had never been immediately engaged by work like that before upon entering a gallery, it was more like walking in to a theme park than an art show.

Since then he has continued to artistically push it to the limit and top himself over and over again. I even saw him eat a bacon cheddar burger pretzel dog once, that's ambition.

On top of already having a very healthy exhibition list, Mike will be having a solo exhibition @ The Contemporary Arts Center of Virginia in April. He will also have a piece in the upcoming group show Chimera Frontiera @ Junc Gallery, also in April. Even more stuff in the cross-country, traveling silent auction, beer drinking show  Baby Robots, and then shortly afterwards he will be building a time machine for the Germans. -Ryan Christian

Well, my name is Michael Rea. 32, brown hair and eyes, 6', about 190 lbs. , and I like long walks by the beach. I am a sculptor from the South suburbs of Chicago. I currently reside in Milwaukee. I am desperately working on an exit strategy for myself. Wisconsin is slowly crushing my soul. Why you should care, is beyond me.

What kind of work were you making at school as a beginner? How did it evolve into mammoth size, epic sculptures?

As a beginner I worked primarily as a painter, and it seems that everyone in painting will tell you to go bigger. So I guess I followed their advice and started making large-scale paintings. When I switched to making sculptures, about three year out of undergrad, I wanted to make things that were human in scale. More specifically my scale. I rarely sketch I simple start cutting something out. In most cases I will refer to my body to gage the scale. When I started, I built everything in an apartment I had in Chicago. Things became cramped very quickly. I had to put my bed in a closet. Shortly after switching to sculpture I left Chicago to attend graduate school. I think it might have been a mixture of the competitive atmosphere of graduate school and a large studio that really pushed me into what you refer to as an epic scale. A friend of mine has a pet python. I remember when he first got it; it was a little bigger than a worm. I asked him "how big will it get?" He replied, "lets just say you won't lose it in the lawn." I guess I want to make things that don't get lost in the lawn.

"Crates" 2006. spray-paint, wood, pink foam

Since your projects are so involved and costly, how do you go about constructing one of your pieces?

Well, I start. It's as simple as that. I start at one end and work through the composition. I try to use cheap materials: pine, mahogany-luan, rope, burlap, and pink foam. This way I tend to get the most bang for my buck. I real don't plan anything. Yes I have an idea of what I want or what I am going to make but that's about it. It's a very linear process, much like drawing. I am never sure how much something will cost in the long run. If I did, I might worry. So I have about a hundred dollar a month wood habit. Since I quit smoking it has been really easy to afford supplies. The real problem is moving these pieces around. Shipping is expensive, and in most cases I have to drive the work out myself. The largest vehicle I can legally drive is a 25' truck. The twenty-five footer is a nightmare. The only thing that really kills me is the cost of gas and truck rentals. Building time and materials are not really an issue for me.

Do you find yourself facing a lot of limitations due to your style?
How does making large sculpture affect your artistic career as opposed to say being an artist who works exclusively on paper?

I guess there are limitations, but the grass is always going to be greener somewhere else. It seems a little harder to sell large sculptures than lets say a work on paper, but if sales were driving me I probably wouldn't be an artist. I am not saying a sale or two wouldn't hurt. In fact I do sell a lot of the smaller pieces I make, which is great. I hope that someday there will be a market for the larger works, but I will have to wait and see how that plays out. There always seems to be a lot of support for large work in residencies and as a visiting artist. I like the idea of traveling somewhere and building something huge and leaving. All you need for that is a plane ticket. I have also found that large bold pieces tend to attract a lot of attention and this has helped a lot with getting more shows and and creating new opportunities. I really cannot complain. It seems every year I show a little more, and a little less comes out of my pocket. That's about all you can ask for.

"Lysistrata" 2005 wood, burlap, rope, pink-foam

"Wood Load in" 2004 wood, burlap, rope

It's surprising that you have all of your fingers left, any good studio related injuries?

A few, but for the most part I have been lucky and or smart. The key is to keep your finger away from the spinning blade. The worst accident I have had is I once shot a brad nail through my pointer finger. I was shooting down into the cross cut of a doll rod with a 1,1/4" Brad. The dowl was about the same in diameter. and a little less in length. The nail fish-hooked out and went right into the finger holding the rod in place. The nail entered the pad and exited under the nail bed. When I felt the impact I pulled my finger away. This worked well since I did not have to think about removing the nail it just sort of happened. I had not realized at this point, that I had shoot right through my finger. I looked at the palm side of my finger and wondered how deep the nail had gone. This is when I noticed that the other side was bleeding as well. Can you believe I didn't even get vicodin for that?

"Olympia" 2007. wood, burlap, rope, yarn, and sometimes a woman

What kinds of things influence your work, besides Indiana Jones?

Well motion pictures in general are a big source of inspiration for me. I have always enjoyed how people will quote lines from a movie. I like how for a few seconds the line between fiction and reality is blurred. I tend to like horror and science fiction films the most. I also like to think about time travel from time to time. Television is a big thing for me as well. I love inappropriate jokes, and I like to incorporate humor into a lot of my pieces as well. Music is good. I tend to spend long hours building and when things are not to loud I listen to music. As I said earlier, I do not start with a plan. This creates an opening to develop or change an idea while I am building. While I am working on a project I am constantly absorbing the world around me and my perspective on a piece may shift. Sometimes in minor increments, and in other instances quit dramatically.

Baby robots is just around the corner, could you talk about that for a minute, maybe drum up some business?

Baby Robots is a show that my good friend Dave Teng Olsen created three years ago. The show started in Madison Wisconsin, where the two of us went to graduate school. Dave created and ran the show the first two years and I gave it a go last year. The idea was to have a show of small works, which could be purchased at a reasonable price. The show is hung salon style, and there is an auction at the opening. Beer is served and bids are written on the wall in pencil next to the pieces. It is usually a little wild toward the end when people really start fighting for a piece. Most artists' start their bids low. There are usually some great deals. The show is usually a nice opportunity to buy work at an affordable price. Each year the show has expanded as we meet more artists. This spring there will be shows in the following seven cities. Chicago, IL, LA, Cal, San Francisco, Memphis, Madison. What we have asked this year is that artists make seven pieces of work that are no bigger than 10x10x10"or 10x10". The first show will be in April, and last in June. I think it is going to be a blast, and I am looking forward to traveling around and seeing all the new work. If this year goes well next year will be even bigger. For details about the shows; or how to participate, and the when, and the where, go to the Baby Robot site.

"In to the wild blue Yonder," 2005. wood, burlap, pink-foam, audio

What kinds of projects can we expect to see from you in the near future?

I am currently working on a piece involving carbonite and myself. I am also interested in making a piece that deals with exorcism. I just confirmed that I will be traveling to Germany this summer to build a time machine. I feel in the new global theater, America should give back. While we received so much help from German scientists in building the first nuclear bomb. The least we could do is help them build a time machine.

I was just thinking about this, did you realize nowadays 18 year olds were born in 1990?

That is a quit an astonishing piece of arithmetic. Are you trying to make me feel old? I feel like I should quote Matthew McConaughey's line from Dazed and Confused. One has to remember men only get hotter as they get older. I cannot wait to get my first gray hairs. This of course will be my ticket to Clooney-Ville. So everyman born in the mid 70's is about to self-actualize in Mazlo's heirchy of hot.

You have lived in Chicago and Wisconsin for quite some time, what's it like being a Midwesterner?

What are all those east coast/west coast folks missing out on? Besides Chicago's championed pizza obviously.
I am sorry but I cannot answer this question right now. Since December, it has either been snowing or below zero. Well there was one day, where it got up to 60 degrees, but there was a tornado and severe thunderstorms to accompany the freakish warm up. I am being extremely serious. There has been 68 inches of snow in the last two months. There is not much I can say for Wisconsin, but there is nothing sexier than Chicago in Spring....

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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